Fabrication of Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy based sensor using Ag NPs on copper tape flexible substrate

Abstract In this work, the authors have investigated the properties of thermally evaporated silver nanoarrays on copper tape (Ag/Cu) as flexible and reusable sensors for organic contaminants. Uniformly deposited silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) with well-controlled sizes have formed by thermal evaporation. The deposition time is varied to obtain different morphology of the Ag nanoparticles. The Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) efficiency has been optimized using Rhodamine 6G (R6G) as a test molecule. Morphological studies have also been carried out using scanning electron and atomic force microscopes. The Ag NPs on the copper tape-based sensor show a substantial enhancement in the order of 8.3x107 in the SERS signal for a deposition time of 10 s. Furthermore, we observe that as-prepared Ag/Cu tape can detect micro-molar alizarine red S (ARS), which exhibited excellent reproducibility as well. Hence, the flexible copper substrate proves to be a promising material for detecting environmental hazards at a meager cost.